Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

“Would false heroics save the world from those too?” she said.

So it was that I continued to correct our course, and brought the main grid to bear on the green islands we loved so dearly.

We were about to go to sleep that night when a noise I had hoped never to hear again emanated from a metal grille in the bulkhead: it was the braying, screeching call of the monsters. One has often heard the idiom that one’s blood runs cold; in that moment I understood the truth of the cliché.

I left the hammock directly, and hurried through the pass ages to the sealed door of the monsters’ hold.

As soon as I slid back the metal plate I saw that the accursed beings were conscious. There were two directly in front of me, crawling awkwardly on their tentacles. I was satisfied to see that in the increased gravity (I had long since changed the spin of the ship in an attempt to approximate the gravity of Earth) their movements were more ponderous and ungainly. That was a hopeful sign, when all else seemed bleak, for with any luck they would find their extra weight on Earth a considerable disadvantage.

Amelia had followed me, and when I moved back from the door she too peered through the tiny window. I saw her shudder, and then she drew back.

“Is there nothing we can do to destroy them?” she said.

I looked at her, my expression perhaps revealing the unhappiness I felt.

“I think not,” I said.

When we returned to our compartment we discovered that one or more of the monsters was still trying to communicate with us. The braying echoed through the metal room.

“What do you think it is saying?” Amelia said.

“How can we tell?”

“But suppose we are to obey its instructions?”

“We have nothing to fear from them,” I said. “They can reach us no more than we can reach them.”

Even so, the hideous screeching was unpleasant to hear, and when it eventually stopped some fifteen minutes later we were both relieved. We returned to the hammock, and a few minutes later we were asleep.

We were awakened some time later—a glance at my watch revealed that we had slept for about four and a half hours—by a renewed outburst of the monsters’ screeching.

We lay still, hoping that it would eventually stop again, but after five minutes neither of us could bear it. I left the hammock and went to the controls.

Earth loomed large in the forwards panel. I checked the positioning of the grid system, and noticed at once that something was amiss. While we had slept our course had wandered yet again: although the fainter grid was still firmly over the British Isles, the main grid had wandered far over to the east, revealing that we were now destined to land somewhere in the Baltic Sea.

I called Amelia over, and showed her this…

“Can you correct it?” she said.

“I think so.”

Meanwhile, the braying of the monsters continued.

We braced ourselves as usual, and I swung the lever to correct the course. I achieved a minor correction, but for all my efforts I saw we were going to miss our target by hundreds of miles. Even as we watched I noticed that the brighter grid was drifting slowly towards the east.

Then Amelia pointed out that a green light was glowing, one that had never before shone. It was beside the one control I had not so far touched: the lever which I knew released the blast of green fire from the nose.

Instinctively, I understood that our journey was approaching its end, and unthinkingly I applied pressure to the lever.

The projectile’s response to this action was so violent and sudden that we were both catapulted forward from the controls. Amelia landed awkwardly, and I sprawled helplessly across her. Meanwhile our few possessions, and the pieces of food we had left about the compartment, were sent flying in all directions.

I was relatively unhurt by the accident, but Amelia had caught her head against a protruding piece of metal, and blood flowed freely down her face. She was barely conscious, and in obvious agony, and I bent anxiously over her.

She was holding her head in her hands, but she reached towards me and pushed me weakly away.

“I … I’m all right, Edward,” she said. “Please… I feel a little sick. Leave me. It is not serious…

“Dearest, let me see what has happened!” I cried.

Both her eyes were closed, and she had gone awfully pale, but she repeated that she was not badly hurt.

“You must attend to driving this craft,” she said.

I hesitated for a few more seconds, but she pushed me away again, and so I returned to the controls. I was certain that I had not lost consciousness for even a moment, but it now seemed that our destination was much nearer. However, the centre of the main grid had moved so that it lay somewhere in the North Sea, indicating that the green fire had altered our course drastically. The eastwards drift, however, continued.

I went back to Amelia, and helped her to her feet. She had recovered her poise slightly, but blood continued to flow.

“My bag,” she said. “There is a towel inside it.”

I looked around but could see her bag nowhere. It had evidently been thrown by the first concussion, and now lay somewhere in the compartment. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the green light still glowing, and a certainty that the grid was moving relentlessly on towards the east made me feel I should be at the controls.

“I’ll find it,” Amelia said. She held the sleeve of her black uniform over the wound, trying to staunch the blood. Her movements were clumsy, and she was not articulating clearly.

I stared at her in worried desperation for a moment, then realized what we must do.

“No,” I said firmly. “I’ll find it for you. You must get into the pressure-tube, otherwise you will be killed. We will be landing at any moment!”

I took her by the arm and propelled her gently to the flexible tube, which had hung unused for much of the flight I took off the tunic of my uniform, and gave it to her as a temporary bandage. She held it to her face, and as she went into the tube the fabric closed about her. I entered my own, and laid my hand on the extended controls inside. As I did so, I felt the fabric tightening about my body. I glanced at Amelia to ensure that she was firmly held, then applied pressure to the green lever.

Watching the panel through the folds of fabric I saw the image become entirely obscured by a blaze of green, I allowed the fire to blast for several seconds, then released the lever.

The image in the panel cleared, and I saw that the grid had moved back to the west once again. It now lay directly across England, and we were dead on course.

However, the eastwards drift continued, and as I watched the two grids moved out of alignment. The shape of the British Isles was almost obscured by the night terminator, and I knew that in England some people would be seeing a sunset, little realizing what was to descend into their midst during the night.

While we were both still safe inside the pressure-tubes I decided to fire the engine again, and so over-compensate for the continual drifting. This time I allowed the green flame to burn for fifteen seconds, and when I looked again at the panel I saw that I had succeeded in shifting the centre of the bright grid to a point in the Atlantic several hundred miles to the west of Land’s End.

Time for this kind of visual confirmation was short: in a few minutes Britain would have disappeared beyond the night terminator.

I released myself from the tube, and went to see Amelia.

“How do you feel?” I said.

She made to step forward from the constraint of the tube, but I held her back.

“I’ll find your bag. Are you any better?”